Comedian Pete Lee: “I never want to offend anybody…I hate conflict…unless you guys like it; then I love it.”


Two Types of Strife


Didn’t Hesiod make strife a central theme of Theogony? He was probably motivated to do so by his contentious relationship with his brother over family property. In his work he mentions Eris, goddess of strife who was born of Night and who gave birth to Hardship, Forgetfulness, Starvation,Pains, Battles, Wars, Murders, Quarrels, Lies, Disputes, Anarchy, and Ruin. Can’t imagine conversations around that table on Thanksgiving, but I can imagine a massive food fight with everyone throwing food except Starvation, who might sit with mouth open.   


I was looking at headlines online again, and I couldn’t help but notice that there really seem to be two kinds of strife, one caused by Nature and the other caused by—am I allowed to say?—Man, Mankind. I guess the current PC language doesn’t accept the encompassing “man” in an age that has almost completely abandoned Standard Formal English. So, strife caused by people or humans in all their practices and identities versus strife caused by any nonhuman entity or process: Heck! the heck with PC, I’m going with “Unconscious Nature” and “Conscious Man.” Yes, therein lie the sources of both types of strife.


Examples?


Well, for Nature, it’s storms of all kinds, eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis, landslides and avalanches, sinkholes, floods, and even rust that weakens bridges. We mind our own business, and suddenly, we’re at war with Nature, including attacks by insects, alligators, sharks, bears, and poison ivy. All of that comes from non-human and pretty much unconscious entities, or barely conscious entities, certainly not self-conscious entities.


And then there’s everything else coming from the human side, from petty arguments to murders to all out war—that’s the conscious stuff, the strife we impose on ourselves, the dominant type of strife. For every animal attack or volcanic eruption, there are literally millions to billions of human actions that bring strife into our lives. Take a look at any newspaper’s headlines. Although there might be a hurricane report on occasion, human caused strife dominates the headlines daily.


Even in southwestern Pennsylvania, where the population of the region’s largest city ranks a lowly 68th among American cities, morning news shows open every day with reports of a shooting or two, often a murder. Strife? I’d say it’s all around us. Not that western Pennsylvania is another eastern Ukraine or Sudan or the West Bank, but, yeah, strife dominates. Did I mention Chicago?


Place


We have to live somewhere.


Unless we are gluttons either for doing evil or receiving it, when given a choice of where to live, we generally choose some place that seems stable and peaceful. From our choice of an ancient rock shelter like the 16,000 year-old encampment at Meadowcroft near Avella, Pennsylvania, or a large hole in the ground like Lascaux near Montignac, France, or Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, we choose the appearance of peace over strife.


But “natural strife” does intrude even in seemingly safe places. Rocks do fall from the ceilings of shelters and caves, and places like the open plains force us to contend with winds, droughts, and wild animals. No place on the planet is free from “natural strife,” as Mammoth Cave’s Lost John mummy reveals. Even the most serene places occupied by ostensibly the most peaceful people are subject to some disturbance by natural phenomena. No one lives outside potential danger. Archbishop Serge Miot was killed when the Haitian earthquake destroyed his office and the cathedral Port-au-Prince in 2010.


Any Conclusions Here?


We live the the midst of strife. But some places are safer than others for a while, and some humans are less contentious than others. Not all is bad news it seems, and even when bad appears to prevail over good, some thrive because of or in spite of strife. In defining his two categories of strife, Hesiod acknowledges that it presents a motive to excel and achieve: Competition does drive many of us to perform well, to be a better singer, athlete, student, manager, leader…


The ubiquity of strife in the “real world” probably explains why more movies and TV shows are centered on mayhem and murder than are centered on inspirational stories of success, that is, stories about the downtrodden rising to positions of respect, authority, wealth, and power. Consider, also, how audiences respond to dramatizations of mayhem as opposed to how they respond to stories of benignity. In watching a tale of murder, the audience gets an intellectual satisfaction when the detectives solve the crime; in watching a tale of compassion, the audience gets an emotional satisfaction, as tearjerkers reveal publicly in every theater. Tragedies, from those of the ancient Greek playwrights to modern authors that detail a fall from prestige, authority, wealth, and power elicit an often unemotional “I knew he was the murderer,” clearly an intellectual response. Agatha Christie made her living by writing about such strife; the most popular computer games center on it; just about every blockbuster movie is rife with strife, which is the stuff of crime stories. On TV the Law & Order franchise has lasted for more than two decades with numerous spinoffs: Special Victims Unit, Criminal Intent, Trial by Jury, LA, True Crime, Organized Crime and a number of video games and foreign adaptations, including Law & Order UK, and popular Russian TV series. Should we add another category of strife to Hesiod’s two? How about “fictional strife”? Living in a sea of strife, we ask rivers to give us more water.


There seems to be an inherent drive in any population of humans to produce strife where there is no natural strife, resulting in the proliferation of those fictional tales as well as actual incidents of strife. We’re just little kids squabbling over an unshared toy, teens squabbling over cheerleading or team positions, and adults squabbling over property lines, religious differences, and political views. Give me two humans, and I’ll give you a potential for strife. Heck, give me one human, and I’ll do the same: Self-strife.


Should We Be Pessimists?


Hesiod did seem to suggest that our lot in life is strife. I wish I could think of some circumstances where no strife occurs. Even a cursory look at religious communities through history reveals the persistence and intrusiveness of strife. One might think that any community with a common morality would engender little strife. But it hasn’t happened, and religious strife still happens. Think of the schisms that separated Christians into Catholics, Orthodox Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Baptists, and sundry other denominations, or the divisions between Sunni and Shia, and then there are Buddhists’ divisions into Theravāda, Mantrayāna, and Mahāyāna. If St. Francis, the eponym of the current Pope were alive today, he might be appalled by his original order’s division into multiple versions of Franciscans that are now divided into multiple “orders,” each with its own offshoots.


If even religions undergo strife, there’s little chance the rest of humanity’s social constructs can be free from it. Schisms abound, some on large scales: That latest one has separated Methodists over sexual orientation as about 1,800 Methodist congregations, (6 % of the total) have broken from the main American affiliation. But I guess that Methodist breakup was inevitable, given the number of Methodists who live in rather conservative—religiously conservative—areas like Texas, North Carolina, and Indiana. Is geography to blame? I see there’s a similar problem among Catholics, Episcopalians, and Evangelicals. Not that any of this gives us new insights into Hesiod’s categories, but all of it reveals the pervasiveness of the goddess Eris in human life: Strife appears to be the way of the world.


Peace


Under the threat of ubiquitous strife, peace becomes the most sought after condition. But it’s a rarity, and when it occurs, it’s temporary at best. Almost everyone agrees that a peaceful life is better than a life lived in strife, but in every generation someone comes along to stir the hornets. And both the peaceful and the peacemakers are those who suffer the imposition.


As Vlad Putin has recently discovered, trying to impose one’s peace on another by eliminating the other actually makes peace on one’s terms more complicated and more difficult to achieve. Infighting among Russians, overt and subtle, has made Vlad’s version of “peace” less viable than he originally planned in his takeover of Ukraine. Obviously, Vlad didn’t learn any lessons from Hitler’s failure to achieve “peace” by destruction. And his arrogant TV defenders who laughed over nuking England and the US merely showed themselves to be fools: Those who were once peaceful can also turn to strife as a mechanism for restoring their peace. The Russians who would favor nuking seem not to recognize that they, too, can be nuked. Strife, as we all learn, breeds more strife—evidence lying in more than two millennia of strife in the Middle East, for example.


Unfortunately, peace cannot be continuous over generations. In Hesiod’s Theogony Harmonia counterbalances Eris. In one version of the myth, Harmonia is the daughter of Aphrodite whose name derives from aphrós (ἀφρός) “sea-foam,” a term most appropriate for the ephemeral nature of her peaceful offspring. Harmonia in some accounts represents balance or symmetry in the universe, and that’s fitting because that account of her mother makes her father Ares, the god of war. Ironically, in tales of her marriage to Cadmus lies the story of her involvement in war and her eventual transformation into a snake—not the animal typically associated in our times with peace unless it lies intertwined with another snake on the medical profession’s caduceus. Vlad, by the way, seems to have gotten himself entwined with the Wagner Group’s leader much like the image of warring snakes that led to the Greek god Hermes’ caduceus.


Lesson from myth? If even the goddess of harmony eventually became a snake, what chance do we ordinary mortals have of remaining in a peaceful state? We spend much of our lives trying to avoid Eris—all time well spent. If we can live harmoniously in this world of strife, we can achieve what so many of our predecessors failed to achieve. But everyone who accomplishes that task lives a far more rewarding existence than those who succumb to the detrimental effects of Eris.


Peace be with you. Harmony all around.

In what appears to be another nail in the coffin of science and rationality, the HBCU * St. Philip’s College (11,000 students) has fired a biology professor for teaching biology. ** Yep! The world keeps getting more bizarre. Time, famous for its cover announcing “God Is Dead,” should publish an issue announcing “Science Is Dead.” Or maybe one announcing “Mind Is Very Much Alive.”


It seems that Professor Varkey had just gone too far by noting the relationship between the X and Y chromosomes and sex. Seems he even had the audacity to say those chromosomes determined sex when every 21st-century kid knows that biology is a matter of mind. What the heck was this Varkey guy thinking? I mean, what’s next? Some physicist saying that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction? Everyone knows nowadays that jets stay aloft because pilots merely will them to stay aloft. All is Mind. Anaxagoras has been vindicated. Aristotle, too. Nous all around. Nous is the noose from which science now hangs. Things are just what we say they are, nothing else. After 2,500 years of philosophy and science, modern humans have returned to their intellectual roots in ancient Greece, and who better to lead that return than four college students who walked out of Dr. Varkey’s class, initiating that firing at St. Philip’s.


But then, aren’t we all like those students when we choose opinion over reality? Certainly, we sometimes ignore realities for belief’s sake. Take politics as an example, specifically the politics of the recent past. Some 80 million Americans accepted the hoax of "Russian Collusion" as reality. 


I suppose the real problem I’m addressing is the one that’s been building up for years in American society, and that problem might best be expressed in the sentence, “It’s my opinion.” So, apparently, it was the opinion of four students at St. Philip’s College that counted more than a couple of centuries of biological research. Nous over reality.


I don’t know which St. Philip is the eponym for the college. There was that original Apostle guy about whom we know little from the Gospels. And then there was a later St. Philip with whom he is conflated. The original Episcopalian founder of the school for Blacks probably had the former in mind. The Apostle Philip seems to have played the role of messenger, telling Jesus that some Greeks wanted to see him. He’s also known for asking Jesus to “reveal the Father.” And he was also there to distribute those fishes and loves of bread to the hungry crowd. ***


In that incident when Philip asks Jesus to reveal the Father, he elicits a rebuke from Jesus who says something like, “How can you have sat through all these classes I’ve taught during the semester and still not understand the subject?” ****


Saints go in and out of popularity with the times. No one seems to hang a St. Christopher’s medal on his car’s rearview mirror today, and I have no doubt that most of St. Philip’s current students have no idea why the school bears the saint’s name. I can surmise that in asking Jesus about the Father, Philip served as a model of inquisitiveness.  It’s in persistent questioning—repeated questioning if that’s what it takes—that we become educated. I guess I can also surmise that Philip might have suffered from ADD since he seemed to have missed one the main points Jesus made during his three-year matriculation at Apostle University. 


In missing a main point Philip foreshadowed the four college students and the administrators at St. Philip’s College who would rather follow their opinions than ask for a scientific explanation. X and Y chromosomes? “Not if they contradict my opinion,” they say.


So, this is where we are in America in 2023. Things are what we say they are. Chromosomes have no real function and are, like the appendix, things that we can do without. Those little bags that men conceal in their underwear are meaningless appendages that have no relation to those mythically important Xs and Ys that Dr. Varkey tried to explain in his lecture.


But speaking of those bags, I might ask whether any self-identifying male administrators at St. Philip’s College even have them. Just curious like St. Philip. Maybe I missed an important lesson. I need a revelation.




*HBCU is the official designation by the Department of Education for “Historically Black College or University.”


**http://tn.buffalo.wi.gov/veteran-biology-professor-who-has-been-teaching-sex-is-determined-by-chromosomes-x-and-y-is-fired-clarotvmais/


*** Who knows, maybe there’s some truth about him in the fourth century apocryphal Acts of St. Philip.


****When Philip asks Jesus to reveal the Father, Christ replies: “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14: 8-9)

The current fandom whose members go by the moniker “furries” troubles me, but probably not why you think. That someone might identify as a cat or mythical animal is not new, just as some child’s identifying as Superman, Wonder Woman, or Babe Ruth isn’t new.


The Limits of Avatarism


All avatars represent either a characteristic or a set of characteristics that serves as an identifier. In the instances of fursonae (analog of personae), the stereotypes are anthropomorphisms of animals, often furry animals like cats. That team mascots are often caricatures of animals and that tales of creatures like the Minotaur go back millennia indicate some historical consistency among generations. But not all identifiers are nonhuman or mythical. What do you think when someone says, “I’m a doctor (lawyer, manager, teacher, etc.)”? Those are personae, just as “cat” is a fursona. All such labels identity by association. Thus, those mostly young people who have adopted a “fursona” express an identifying stereotype—though I’m not quite sure what “cat” represents beyond my own stereotypical ideas of “feline,” “feminine,” “impossible to herd,” and “independent.” Not being a cat person, I can only surmise the characteristic that a modern “furry” might have in mind by self-identifying as a cat.


Stereotypes


And that’s where my objections surface, but I can also apply those objections to my own sense of self. Like others, I can fault myself at times for identifying too narrowly: “I was a college professor before retiring.” “I was an author.” I was a researcher.” Yes, all true, but none of those three, even when I might have used them as identifiers, captured the more complex “me.” And why should I choose those identifiers over others? After all, during my many decades I have also been garbage man, a jack hammer operator, a carpenter, a janitor, a clerk, a hod carrier and stone mason’s assistant, and a spouse, father, Little League coach, Steelers’ fan, and…See what I mean? Which one of those should I choose as an identifier to the exclusion of others? That’s where my objection to fursonae lies.


So, it troubles me that some people have chosen a rather limited fursona when they are, in fact, personae. When any of us choose an identifier, whether it be “furry,” specifically “cat,” or human, specifically “line boss,” we focus on just one aspect of our complex lives. Sure, it makes for easy introductions and conversations with strangers, but it also brands and limits. Each of us is more complex than any stereotype.


But What’s the Alternative?


Very few people upon introduction to a stranger, want to hear a life story though I’d say many if not all of us have heard much of one while sitting on a train, bus, or plane next to a talkative traveler. Unless we are imbued with the patience of Job, we prefer the quick-and-easy that stereotypes and labels provide.


That we even consider labeling ourselves reveals our inherent impatience with our own stories. Our own complexity is too tiring to tell, and much of what we have been and are is relatively uninteresting. “Who are you today?” “Well, today, I was a car washer.” “Today, I was a house cleaner.” “Today, I was the neighborhood taxi cab driver shuttling kids to their lessons or games.” Boring. Yes, boring, but those, too, are parts of our complex identities.


Let’s say you are famous, maybe a rock star. Wherever you go, you have adoring fans, some of them highly imitative. People, usually kids, who want to be another you. Maybe a Kim Kardashian, now worth an estimated four billion bucks. Her following seems to indicate that she does, in fact, have many fans and among them some girls and young women who want to be lookalikes. Is there any difference between a Kardashian fan and a fursona? Is all fandom a matter of assuming a stereotype of another, albeit human or animal?


The day after a Taylor Swift concert in Pittsburgh, one local TV news show interviewed a little girl about the event. Seems that during the concert, Swift knelt down on stage to place her hat on the little girl. She was thrilled. When the reporter asked whether she would wear it in public, she said, “No way.” She intends to keep the hat in her Shrine to Swift (My words, not hers), that is, in her collection of memorabilia that does not differ in kind from collections by fans of Disney characters, Star Wars characters, and similar movie icons.


And doesn’t that remind you of religious relics? The objects associated with others, like a saint or a rock star, become connections that transcend words. Statues and paraphernalia become sacramentals, both reminders and and links. We emulate with the aid of such sacramentals; they enhance our emulation of characteristics or qualities that we believe to be special, like sanctity or a particular talent. I, for example, have a little bust of Socrates beside my computer and a bobblehead of Einstein on a shelf. Why? I would like to have the ability of Socrates to question my way toward wisdom and the ability of Einstein to derive understanding by thought experiments. And I also have Christian sacramentals in the house, reminders that humility underlies morally good personae and that pride underlies morally corrupt personae. So, I guess  in retrospect, I must be somewhat like my contemporaneous “furries” someone who seeks to identify with the characteristics of others, in my particular case, a Jesus-Socrates-Einstein character—obviously two of who have largely surmised facial features (though unlike a Kardashian fan, I attempt to emulate with limited success the morality and intellect of the three rather than their appearance or mannerism).   


Virtual Communion


One difference between Catholicism and Protestantism lies in the theology of Communion. The former hold that it is transubstantiation, whereas, generally, a number of sects in the latter believe it to be consubstantiation. That is, Catholics believe the host has been “transformed,” whereas Protestants believe it isn’t but that it connects communicant and Christ very closely. Sometimes it’s a matter of a difference without a meaning. The precise differences are irrelevant here and beyond my pay grade, but the general idea is that “eating God” establishes a close relationship between deity and believer and imparts to the faithful an actual union of divine and human. One can’t get that close to being another simply by wearing a cat costume. Communion is more than appearance and stereotyping, and it has occurred in more contexts than Christianity.


If you read Sir James Frazier’s The Golden Bough, you’ll come across tales of people for whom “eating the God” meant acquiring godlike characteristics or qualities. Similarly, if you read accounts of Huron and Iroquois by Jesuit Saint John (Jean) de Brébeuf, you’ll find a story of one captive who responded to hacking by attacking the hackers. Without feet or hands he still tried to attack his captors, so his torturers ripped off part of his flesh to eat in the belief that his bravery would become part of them. We are a strange species, and although other species like praying mantises and black widow spiders are known as cannibals, it’s our species that ascribes a spiritual meaning to “eating God” or “eating others,” such is our drive toward self-identification.


The Death of the Eclectic Human
I have not personally encountered a “furry” though I understand that even colleges have them in their populations during today’s Age of Unreality, or should I say “Virtual Reality.” Apparently, the freedom afforded by the open societies of the affluent West has reached its apex in irony: Those who want to be identified for a fursona cannot accept that their freedom to do so limits who they are. The eclectic human is dead. That need for communion with a stereotype has many young people pinning their future to the suit of a mascot.


And a whole generation of enabling adults has acquiesced to the demand for stereotyping in the name of diversity in society, when, in fact, the so called diversity is merely a set of limiting identifiers for individuals. It’s the culmination of two drives that set up the societal conundrum of the West: The drive to be free from all restrictions and the drive to assert an identity that reveals a dominant characteristic. In times of affluence, relative safety, and lack of accountability, individuals have chosen a life of imitation.


Diversity now includes fictional humans, hybrids little different from satyrs and centaurs, Jewish golems, Japanese oni, French ogres, Irish leprechauns, British goblins and faeries, Babylonian Aqrabuamelus, Cretan Minotaurs, Slavic werewolves, Haitian zombies, and a plethora of other stereotypes of emotional, physical, and mental traits. In their efforts to become “different from,” many young people have become “the same as.”


The trend for fursonae or other such identifiers will continue until reality pokes its nose in the business of the West by virtue of a series of small collapses for individuals and groups. Or, the trend will continue until some large collapse, such as a war, famine, or the next more deadly pandemic strikes down the affluent and comfortable life that is now free from accountability that many in the West enjoy.


Reality Means Nothing until It Means Something


I’ll end with an anecdote whose relevance you can surmise.


In an undergraduate geology class I taught, I covered the nature of streams, revealing how they changed landscapes and formed characteristic valleys and floodplains. In the lessons, I included the term drainage divide, essentially any highland that separates drainage basins. Thus, though there are many such divides in North America, two major divides stand out, the Western Continental Divide that separates streams that flow toward the Pacific Ocean from the streams that flow toward the Gulf of Mexico, and the Eastern Continental Divide that separates the streams that flow to the Atlantic Ocean from those that flow toward the Gulf of Mexico. Between those two divides lies that enormous Mississippi Drainage Basin. The point of the lesson centered on the effect of gravity: Water, as just about everyone knows, flows downhill. Compass direction is irrelevant, thus rivers flow as slope dictates. In western West Virginia and western Pennsylvania, for example, the Monongahela River flows downslope generally toward the north, where in Pittsburgh its confluence with the Allegheny River forms the southwestern trending Ohio River. Flowing northward isn’t special; the Nile also flows northward as do notable European and Russian rivers.


Nevertheless, after class a female student said, “My mother says the Monongahela flows backwards.”


By that I assumed she meant that it flows northward. I pointed out that her notion of “backward” probably derived from seeing countless wall maps that hang from north to south, thus making it appear that the river, at least on the wall map, looked as though it went “up.” I reiterated the lesson that rivers flow downhill and mentioned the slope from points higher in West Virginia toward points lower near Pittsburgh (and ultimately toward the Gulf of Mexico).

​Having re-explained the lesson, I thought the reality of stream flow resolved until she ended, before leaving the classroom, by ignoring my explanation with this: “Well, my mother says it flows backward.”


Reality means nothing until it means something.

Earth’s average air pressure at sea level is 14.7 pounds per square inch. That means  every square inch in every direction, both the outside and the inside of your nostrils, for example. And because the pressure on the inside of your nose, except for those deep breaths, equals the pressure on the outside. The flimsy cartilage isn’t compressed against the septum. Your body evolved to stand up to the weight of an atmosphere some 500 miles thick and all those jumbled air molecules banging together. That banging is measured as the pressure.
​
“But it’s just air, right? How can it exert such force?” It’s still matter regardless of its being an invisible gas, so gravity makes it, as it makes you, have weight. All those air molecules bang together in random directions exerting pressure. You live beneath an ocean of air where the air pressure is higher. Farther up, less overlying atmosphere, less pressure. Deeper down, say in a mine below sea level, higher pressure. Now imagine the pressure under the ocean of water, say at the location of the sunken Titanic.


Crushing Pressure


Let’s go with close approximations: If you scuba dive, you increase the (hydrostatic) pressure on you body by one atmosphere for every 33 feet of descent. At a depth of 33 feet, therefore, you bear the weight of two atmospheres (29.4 lbs/sq. in). At about 66 feet down, you have to bear up against three atmospheres of pressure, or 44.1 pounds per square inch. You can do the math for every unit of 33 feet of increased depth, generally adding up uniformly since water is not a very compressible compound (thus its use in hydraulics) though it undergoes some squeezing at great depth. Now calculate the pressure at a depth of 13,000 feet, that is, more than two miles (5,280 ft X 2) down. Those water molecules bang together under the weight of the overlying water.


Okay, too lazy to get out the calculator or put pen to paper? Thirteen thousand divided by 33 equals 393.9 times 14.7. Add the one atmosphere of sea level pressure to that number and you’ll get 5,790.33 pounds per square inch. Crushing pressure.


Styrofoam Cup


I remember a styrofoam cup dropped into the depths of the “Tongue of the Ocean” in the Bahamas. Open on one end like your nose, it was squeezed into a miniature version of itself, and even though it expanded on its way back up to the surface, it still wouldn’t make a decent shot glass back on the surface. Had it been enclosed, it would have looked like a small pith ball.


Need any more of a lesson? Then suck the air out of an empty plastic water bottle to see the crushing pressure of the atmosphere at work. As you lessen the pressure on the inside, the outside pressure implodes the plastic.


Even Military Subs Have Limited Dive Depths


I recall the tragic accident of the USS Thresher, an atomic submarine that sank below its dive depth, that is, below the pressure its hull was designed to withstand. Photos of the wreck revealed the implosion that destroyed it and its crew. When the Navy attempted to contact the vessel, it picked up a distress signal, but there was no way of saving anyone who might have survived the initial crushing. If you have ever used a power washer, you know its ability to cut through wood. Pressure (power) washers range from about 1,800 pounds per square inch to about 3,000 psi.  Now imagine increasing that to the 5,790.33 psi at a depth of 13,000 feet. Those inside the Thresher where the ocean breached any part of the hull would have probably been killed instantly, shredded by that “pressure washer.”


So, diving to great depths is a dangerous activity. We know it, but we still do it. And today the Coast Guard is searching for a lost deep-dive submersible that descended with paying ($250,000 each) customers to see the Titanic at 13,000 feet. As of this writing on June 21, 2023, the pilot and passengers are still missing with time running out on their air supply—that is, running out if the vessel hasn’t already imploded under the pressure of 5,790 pounds per square inch.


Pressure Changes with Altitude, also


Would you spend $250,000 for a day of pleasure if you knew there was a real possibility that you might be almost instantly shredded if the hull is breached? “Maybe,” you say, “I don’t have that kind of money. Heck, a trip to Disney’s make-believe worlds drains my credit card; I’m certainly not about to fork over a quarter mil to put myself in a dangerous predicament at 13,000 feet. Anyway, I saw the movie and the documentaries.”


But have you ever taken a flight in a pressurized airplane? Going up is also fraught with danger from pressure change as a recent private airplane wreck indicates. The crash of that jet seems to have resulted from a loss of cabin pressure, just the opposite of the probable fate of the missing submersible.


What’s Your Point, Donald?


Life is risky at best, but we’re inclined to evaluate potentially equally dangerous actions as less risky than others, especially when we judge them in the context of their rewards. Millions of us take flights on pressurized planes without much thought about cabin pressure. Thus, millions accept flying as a minimal risk, though still a risk. Some of us recognize more risky ventures, but engage in them anyway. Comedian Brian Regan has a skit about a party in which some braggadocio tries to impress everyone with his exploits only to have another partygoer, an astronaut, quietly say, “I walked on the moon”—a feat impossible to top by any Earthbound braggadocio.


Apparently, some of us have brains that demand a diet of high risk so we can feast on neurotransmitters. Climbing ice walls, climbing tall buildings just to get a selfie, or skydiving are among the risky actions we take. Millions of us have played contact sports, skied down steep rocky or treed slopes, gone snorkeling in waters where sharks live, or driven over the speed limit on a country road. We constantly face and evaluate risks that we take in the contexts of their potential rewards.


Some risks are avoidable, but living on this planet means submersion in an ocean of risks from sitting on a bus next to a coughing rider to eating at a buffet in Vegas, where some previous diner might have done some double-dipping in the condiments. Risk is inevitable.


But very risky ventures are not inevitable, such as climbing Mt. Everest or spending $250,000 to see the Titanic that lies almost 13,000 feet underwater. Sure, those who survive can say at a party, “I climbed Mt. Everest,” or “I dived to see the Titanic,” but  the dead never get that rush of neurotransmitters.


We make inferences all the time. Those aboard the submersible, even after signing the waiver that mentions the word death three times, certainly inferred their safety. Right now I assume that my desk chair will hold me while I type this. I assume that the floor of a public building won’t collapse beneath my weight. Of course, the risks of both of those seem minimal. But they do exist, and they make a point about living. Our ability to evaluate risk is what enables us to live without anxiety.


This Is Not Your Practice Life


Every so often I feel the need to reiterate the main theme of this website. Seeing the news about the missing submersible has brought that saying to the forefront of my brain. But I have been as guilty of taking risks as others, and two ocean experiences come to mind.


One: I decided to go ocean kayaking by myself off St. Thomas. As I rowed seaward, I found myself fighting a current that carried me toward a rocky promontory. Waves increased in height, with crests higher than my head when I was in the wave troughs. So, I had to row like some olympic sculler. That I am writing this little incident today indicates that I rowed myself out of danger. Whew! Lesson learned: I won’t go off kayaking alone in choppy waters and strong currents.


Two: Scuba diving off the Pitons of St. Lucia, I found myself sinking because I hadn’t adjusted for “neutral buoyancy” as I got caught up in looking at the coral environment and tumbled volcanic blocks that ocean life had colonized. Toward the end of the dive I had to use more of my tank’s air for buoyancy, more, that is, than normal. That limited my dive time. When I found myself at 90 feet, I realized that I had to ascend to spend the requisite five minutes at 15 feet to avoid the bends. As I watched my tank’s pressure gauge fall toward the “red” zone, I remember being somewhat anxious, my mortality revealing itself through the voluntary risk I had taken. But, again, Whew! I’m here.


As the deaths of uncounted seafarers reveal, the ocean has been merciless. The convenience and relative safety of sea travel today coupled with luxury unknown in ancient, medieval, and early modern times seem to minimize risk, but the Titanic’s and the nuclear USS Thresher’s sinking—like the sinking of other vessels—inform us that dangers still exist. Signing a waiver doesn’t eliminate the risk. Supposed rational justification doesn’t  change the level of danger. The brain can fool itself, misjudge, and mistake potential rewards for failsafe assurances. *


Comparative Risks


You’ve heard it from friends and family: “Drive safely.” Those in the submersible, possibly today beyond rescue, might have heard “Dive safely.” But no advice serves when we take extraordinary risks, such as riding a rocket into space or taking a submersible into the depths just for the sake of the experience or for the sake of saying something like Regan’s astronaut’s incomparable “I walked on the moon.”




*A lesson that all criminals should learn before they engage in criminal activity like home invasion or robbery and a lesson all spring breakers should learn before drinking heavily on a hotel balcony. 

God save the Who?


Just have to ask because I don’t understand my fellow Americans. How is it possible that in an audience of presumably educated people, no one questions the gaffes, repeated redundant tautologies, unintelligible gibberish, and false statements by POTUS AND VPOTUS? I have seen POTUS and VPOTUS stand in front of cheering, applauding, and laughing fans as both have uttered falsehoods, incomplete sentences, and irrelevant statements. The latest? POTUS said, “God save the Queen.” *


God save us all! Was he referring to Camilla? Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II, Spain’s Queen Letizia, the Netherlands’ Queen Maxima, Sweden’ Queen Silvia, Norway’s Queen Sonja, Tonga’s Queen Nanasipau’u, Belgium’s Queen Mathilde, Lesotho’s Queen ‘Macenate Mohato Seeiso, Jordan’s Queen Tania, Buthan’s Queen Jetsun Pema, Cambodia’s Queen Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk, or Brunei’s Queen Pengiran Ana Saleba? All of them? Was he referring to Freddie Mercury’s rock band Queen?


Where’s the Contention of Days Gone By?


Really doesn’t matter, does it? The Democratic audiences and kowtowing reporters simply sit and listen, or applaud, or laugh as they seemed to do when POTUS wished his blessings on “the Queen.” Wait, isn’t this a democratic republic sans royalty?


So, as they say, “‘splain it to me.” What happened to the highly critical audiences the last president faced, people shouting out, people throwing accusations about Russian Collusion and what not? I preferred those who questioned over those who now just accept anything either POTUS OR VPOTUS says. Give me the contentious days of the Trump presidency. Regardless of the obvious venom, they exhibited people willing to question. And whereas it is true that Trump’s partisan audiences also nodded in agreement, no one can discount that contentious environment during press conferences, a contentiousness that seems to be woefully lacking at this time.


Just give me an audience in either party that doesn’t sit like obedient pets whose owners could say softly, “I’m going to kill you” as tails wag in ignorance. The next time you see a Biden or Harris audience laugh at a non-joke, nod heads at a gaffe or nonsensical statement, or applaud a falsehood, just think of those trusting tail-wagging pets. It really doesn’t matter what they say. Both the current POTUS AND VPOTUS could read from a phone book and still get unquestioning nods of approval.   


Give me someone in an audience who says, “What the H do you mean, POTUS? What queen?” Or “Why, VPOTUS, do you think saying (paraphrased), ‘Time is important because time is important because this is the time that is important’ or in a hint of an infinite regression, ‘I am a woman who has a mother who is a woman who had a mother who was a woman’ has any meaning?”

​Enabling


I suppose most of us are guilty at times of “enabling,” a term associated with parents and friends of drug addicts, alcoholics, and narcissists. But it’s also a term that could just as easily be associated with American political audiences that allow politicians to speak non sequiturs, irrelevant comments, and even total nonsense.


Pardon my use of the imperative mood, here, Lord, but I’m desperate for salvation from the enabled politicians. So, in a direct address, “God, save us all.”






*Subjunctive, and probably not imperative, mood, for you grammarians. It’s “May God save the Queen,” without the “may,” I assume. Otherwise, the statement would be “God, save the Queen,” an order given to God—who isn’t to be trifled with by mortals—written in the imperative mood.

One of the math problems high schoolers have to solve is translating a triangle from one set of coordinates (three points on a graph) to another set. Typically, the problem shows the triangle with labels for the points where each of its three angles lies on the graph. Here's a sample translation problem: Move each point by, say, 2, 2 [on the y and x axes], if you remember). To solve the problem of translation, the student then adds or subtracts the given change from the labeled coordinates of the given triangle on the graph. It’s not, as they say, rocket surgery. A point, or triangle vertex, lying at 5, 1, then moves, or translates, to point lying at 7, 3. And so on for the other two vertices. The triangle stays the same; it just moves on the graph as each vertex translates by 2, 2.


The Drug Problem


So, let’s take the triangle of druggies, free drug paraphernalia in vending machines, and homelessness. If you move the second coordinate point in that triangle, you will move the other two. “Look, see it’s simple,” as POTUS might say, “I’m not kidding.” So, Brooklyn now has a vending machine that provides addicts “free access to Naloxone, drug-test strips that detect fentanyl, and ‘Safer Smoking’ kits that come with a pipe, mouthpiece and lip balm for smoking crack and crystal meth.” * Now, if you are an addict who currently has your homeless “home” on a sidewalk a few blocks away from the coordinates with the free drug paraphernalia, what do you think you might do? Yep, translate. And if in your drug-induced stupor, you use the vending machine, which product are you most likely to select? I’m guessing the crack pipe, but hey, what do I know. Obviously, the authorities know what they are doing in offering a new set of coordinates. Why else would New York City see an increase in overdose deaths?


The Homeless Problem


Remember the kerfuffle over Super Bowl LVI held in Los Angeles? Yep, coordinates of the homeless were translated so that visitors would not see them. ** Translation: The Left’s solution to almost every problem. Simply move it. Who’s going to notice? Problem solved, right?


The Migrant Problem


And translation seems to be working well for the influx of unaccompanied minors who cross the southern border. Some 200,000+ of them have been “translated.” But in this instance, no government official seems to know their coordinates. One possibility is that they have been translated into the coordinates of child labor, drug trade, and sex trafficking. Now there’s a new triangle, and its one that continuously moves!


Or take the New York mayor’s solution to the migrant influx. Eric Adams has put them in schools, hotels, and now homes. Yes, the mayor wants one of those coordinate points to be someone’s home—and he’ll even come up with some money for the translation.


Ah! Modern Liberals


What can I say? Apparently, a moved problem is a solved problem.






*Chris Pandolfo, NYC unveils vending machine for drug users, with free crack pipes and Narcan for ODs. Fox News online at https://www.foxnews.com/us/nyc-unveils-vending-machine-drug-users-free-crack-pipes-narcan-ods  Accessed June 17, 2023.
Patrick Hauf, https://www.foxnews.com/us/la-county-free-pipes-smoke-crack-meth-opioids-report LA County handing out free pipes to smoke crack, meth, opioids: report. Fox News online at Accessed June 17, 2023.
Molly Line, Boston’s crack pipe distribution strategy sparks backlash as ‘methadone mile’ crisis persists. Fox News online at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bostons-crack-pipe-distribution-strategy-sparks-backlash-methadone-mile-crisis-persists Accessed June 17, 2023.


**Cfraig Graziosi, Outrage over homeless encampment cleared to make way for Super Bowl in Los Angeles: ‘Shameful’.  Independent online Thursday, 27 January, 2022. Online at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/super-bowl-homeless-camp-outrage-b2002118.html. Accessed June 17, 2023.


***Haley Brown, Bernadette Hogan, and Emily Crane, Adams floats idea of New Yorkers housing migrants in ‘private residences’. New York Post online at https://nypost.com/2023/06/05/adams-wants-new-yorkers-to-house-migrants-in-private-residences/ Accessed June 17, 2023.

I read today that the son of a famous athlete died. And then I noticed a series of comments, many of them stones cast, not at the son, but at the father. I wondered, “Do these people know that they, too, will die?” It appears that in the Web World spewing hate during a time of tragedy is more rule than exception.


Similarly, after Pat Robertson died this June, a plethora of comments also surfaced. * Among them was a lengthy comment by Philip from Scottsdale. Philip noted his reasons for disagreeing with Robertson, and then, in addressing negative comments, wrote:


    “Ask not for whom the bell tolls. Death, for all its ugliness, gives nobility and poignancy to life and to the departed. The democracy of the dead cannot help but to soften sharp differences, reminding us that for all of us the electrocardiogram's sine will someday flatten.”


He’s right, of course. There is a certain “democracy of the dead.” It’s a nation into which we will all migrate. Yet, so many of the living who live virtual lives on their computers, seem to throw typed stones at the recently departed with whom they disagreed. We live more in an age of sharpened, rather than softened, edges. Some of the living cannot soften their differences with the dead.


But it’s true that some who emigrate from this life have lived truly heinous lives that elicit anger and hate: Hitler, for example. But once dead, always dead. One might be thankful that such a human monster no longer plagues the world. No doubt the families of tens of millions of people who died in his ultimately meaningless war for power were left bitter and hateful. They had lived in relatively safety and peace; then he destroyed their hopes.


Had there been an Internet in 1945, it would have been filled with not just hundreds of negative comments, but millions. And I probably would also have relished his death, being one to “cast a stone” at the obvious “sinner.” But to what effect? Why cast a stone at the dead? It distracts one from living peacefully.


Are so many of us locked into grudges that extend past the gravestone? Anecdotally, I’ll note that a large number of such comments seem to derive from the Far Left and the Far Right. There’s a similarity in that both extremes manifest a loop: Hate drives extremism that drives more hate that drives more…. Comment sections about dead “opponents” never seem to show a softening of sharp differences, regardless of Philip’s assessment that death unites all.


Can we critically analyze the lives of the dead? Sure. We can enumerate evils. Write an objective biography if you wish, but refuse to wallow in hate. Those comment sections serve little purpose other than to spew hate and generate counter comments that further someone's disdain and sharpen differences. The comments then disappear into the realm of a digital world much as the living disappear into the “democracy of the dead.”


Philip was right to reference John Donne’s famous poem. Knowing it gives one pause in the realization of the ultimate migration we all will make.


No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.


Philip’s “democracy of the dead” is a phrase worth teaching to the young destined to spend so many hours posting their negative thoughts online.


*Douglas Martin. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/08/us/pat-robertson-dead.html Philip’s comment bears the time stamp of June 8, the day of Martin’s Robertson obituary in the New York Times.

I wrote a harsh assessment of POTUS today, but I decided not to publish it lest the DOJ, FBI, IRS, and Homeland Security send armed agents to my door in the middle of the night. Nevertheless, I’ll let the current President speak his own words; then you assess. To the League of Conservation Voters Biden said:


“We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.”


I’m not kidding. Those are his words. You assess.


But I can’t resist jumping for joy for the people of the Maldives who must be ecstatic over the news. Imagine the increase in their tourist industry.

As the archaeologists tell it, the Minoans must have produced some very athletic people. Their prowess involved leaping over a charging bull. I can imagine it, but only because I’ve seen videos of idiots risking their lives by jumping over a speeding car, some of those modern jumpers not faring well.


But a charging bull? Timing is everything. The Minoan bulls stood nearly six feet at the shoulder, had a wide rack of horns, and tossed their heads upward during an attack. Plus, they ran at varying speeds unlike a car with a driver holding the speedometer steady.


Now, we’ve all seen athletes do some amazing things. An olympic high jumper could easily clear the height of a large bull, as evidenced by the record book. But the crossbar suspended between the verticals is stationary. Timing is all on the jumper, not on both the movement of the jumper and the object to be jumped. Bulls move; high jump crossbars don’t. Timing isn’t foreign to a quarterback hitting the moving receiver with a pass or a batter hitting a changeup after seeing a fastball. Humans can make some pretty remarkable adjustments not only in their athletic endeavors, but also in their daily lives, such as in catching a dropped toothbrush or fork, both of which undergo gravitational acceleration. 


But a charging bull? Even matadors have been gored. There’s a certain unpredictability in the process.


One parameter that a bull-leaper has to his advantage is the visibility of the bull. He can see it coming and attempt the jump on the basis of experience. Timing a moving object that changes speed is one of the most difficult assessments we humans have to make. One small miscalculation, and it’s lights out. (Thus, the dangers of hypersonic missiles that change speed and direction)


It’s easier to jump over bull crap, isn’t it. A patty just sits there. One merely has to look and judge his own speed of approach. And it’s smaller than the bull who dropped it indiscriminately. Thus, seeing is everything.


But now, we Americans face a new challenge. We can’t see where the bull crap lies. The FBI and its overlord, the DOJ, won’t give details to Congress. They have actually hidden those details, such as the reported documents about the “Russian Collusion,” the laptop, and even the allegations against the current sitting President. We don’t know what is bull crap. We don’t even know how to avoid it. It’s invisible. In fact, because of the secrecy, we don't even know whether we need to watch where we step or whether or not we're about to be gored.  


Not even an ancient Minoan bull-leaper could jump over today’s politically motivated bull crap. It’s invisible. And even when we think we see it, someone in the FBI or DOJ moves it at different speeds. Just when we think we’re in the vicinity and set to jump, they move the crap. So, we can’t time our jump--even when a whistleblower tries to tell us that it exists and where it lies. 


Leaping an actual charging bull in ancient times was easier than jumping over today’s bull—.

That unions have protected workers from abusive and dangerous conditions imposed by employers seems to be undeniable. Work weeks were long and days were hard in the days before unionism; remuneration was slight, and days off were few or nonexistent. Life for workers was tougher before the rise of unions. But like all human experiments, there was a downside. Employers simply transferred the additional costs associated with meeting union demands to the customers who happened to be the very unionized workers. There’s always a glitch of some kind. Seems that we humans are in the habit of never getting things completely right. Just when we think we have adopted a solution…


Pre-union Conditions


If I had to recommend a place where one could learn about those pre-union days, that place would be the Lackawanna Coal Mine in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Tour guides lower tourists into the anthracite mine via the same car the miners used and then tell them about the life of the miners who had to dig and load 3-tons of coal into a “coal car” during a shift or go without pay. Conditions in the mine, about 55 degrees, damp, and dusty, were both uncomfortable and dangerous: Falling ceiling rock, explosive methane, and choking carbon dioxide. If a miner died, the coal company required his family to provide another worker or abandon the company house where they lived. The new worker was often a child. In an era with no social, outcast family members were subject to hard times. Children as young as eight worked in the mine. Imagine a typical eight-year-old today spending his time sitting alone in a dark damp room with rats and having the job of opening and closing mine doors for the passing 3-ton coal cars—one slip near the track meant dismemberment or death.


Union Conditions


So, yes, unions helped to alleviate some daily pain and elevate some remuneration for workers. Unions improved working conditions--for some. But that “never getting things completely right” then kicked in; and it was compounded by segregated unions and rabid Marxists. * A movement that had begun in the mid- to late-nineteenth century spread throughout most of the country in the early twentieth century, but it excluded many blacks and almost all Asian Americans. Outside the mines, other workers, some belonging to formerly considered white-collar work, saw the benefits of unions. Teachers unionized; college professors, also.


The “not getting things quite right” then became a blanket protection for all members, and by virtue of the protection, a safety net for the least competent. Unionization meant applying the principle of equity. All workers, regardless of effort and merit, had to be treated the same. All earnings stemmed from a graduated level of remuneration based on seniority. That seniority-over-merit still pervades union thinking. It shackles the energetic, bright, and most productive to the union wagon.


And government workers! And that’s where “never getting things completely right” manifests itself. That’s where seniority leads to an Anthony Fauci becoming and remaining director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022 at a final salary of more than $400,000, that is, more than POTUS. Live long in government, and, as they say on Planet Vulcan, prosper. And the prospering comes with many perks, including a very lucrative retirement, adulation even in the mishandling of the COVID crisis, and a pre-retirement pay increase based on preventing pandemics.


Deleterious Effects


One of the first unions—it might have been first—to form in the US was the International Typographical Union (ITU), founded in 1852. It was the union to which my father, a linotypist, belonged. He joined the union after returning from WWII and acquiring the skill on a linotype in the 1940s, and he faithfully paid his dues until the ITU dissolved, virtually eliminating his retirement in 1986. Mismanagement of funds by union bosses seems to be one of those “never getting things quite right” processes. Union bosses generally live better than those they represent.


In what seems to be a long time ago, I watched the deleterious effects of unionism in Pennsylvania’s 14 state universities. For one very small example, consider the division of labor. Unions define the parameters of jobs very specifically. That means—and this seems ridiculous in retrospect—that when I carried a small cabinet across the campus during a change in offices, I violated the rules governing what I was allowed to do. I probably should have done it in the dark, for a dean saw me carrying the cabinet and told me that wasn’t my job and that I could “get in trouble” for moving the small piece of furniture. I continued to carry it anyway, and he sheepishly went on his way after I said, “I’ve been waiting for this for weeks; I’m done waiting.” Ah! The hubris of the tenured faculty member who is also protected by a union. I was imbued with the audacity to be curt with a dean.


That was a small and insignificant incident in the context of division of labor and forced “equity” that a faculty union imposes. During my four-decade tenure, I saw the equity in action as awards for research were doled out regardless of the research quality or effect. Someone’s getting a $200 local grant equated to some other faculty member’s getting a $200,000 national grant. All research was in the union’s eyes of equal value. Without that equity, the members would have to acknowledge individual differences, including differences in skills, knowledge, and talent: In a unionized faculty everyone deserves a trophy.  


And that context of dividing labor enhanced the separation of academics into departments with the sole rights to their disciplines. In other words, it was anathema for someone in geology to have the audacity to teach what someone in biology taught. Yet, if we look to the nineteenth century and the development of academia, we see that naturalists like Darwin concerned himself with both geology and biology. Compartmentalizing subjects negates the interrelationship of knowledge bases. A paleobotanist surely must know something about the physical environment in which the plants grew, just as a botanist must know something about soils and hydrology.


Did I benefit from being a member of a state union? Yes, in a number of ways, but I am not an avid supporter of a union of state or federal employees, and in that I fall into the thinking of FDR.


Government Employee Unions at the Heart of Government Employee Corruption


At present, Americans have just gone through a time when a few corrupt government officials have interfered with a national election. The now proven falsity of allegations about Russian collusion and the slow-walked allegations about a sitting president having taken bribes in pay-to-play international relations, both stem in my mind from the protections afforded unionized government workers.


Guaranteed increases in relatively high salaries based on longevity and protected to the Nth degree from dismissal, a hubris has settled in the minds of some. They can act with seeming immunity even when those actions teeter on the brink of a coup. The mindset of invincibility has made some government employees, like those in the FBI who irresponsibly handled the FISA warrants, use a government agency as a weapon.


Invincible? Really. Who has been punished? Who has been held accountable? And as FDR saw, a government union can thwart the will of the people who rely on laws as a manifestation of their democracy. It is the US, Congress, not government unions, that expresses the will of the people. In his words, “. . . a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.” ** FDR did, however, concede that a government union had a place in protecting workers from inordinate work hours and safety. But he warned that “meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government.” To allow government unions or not to allow them: That is the dilemma.  


Teacher strikes? Professor strikes? Both similar. The teachers hold the local school board and constituents hostage. The professors hold the state hostage until their demands are met. That subverts the purpose of elections. It essentially makes an alternative government. And it definitely leads to government employees feeling that they have power over the rule of law as legislated by elected officials.


I believe that the unions served an important social purpose in their development, but I also believe that unions and union-thinking provides the context of today’s seemingly corrupt FBI and DOJ. Yesterday, I saw a video of Senator Ted Cruz fruitlessly questioning the deputy director of the FBI about allegations against President Biden. The director refused to comply with the senator’s request for documents—unclassified documents—and recordings.


And what will happen? Will anyone in the protected status of a government position suffer the consequences of subverting the will of the people? FDR was correct. Unionized government employees do subvert that will; he was insightful, but he, even in working with J. Edgar Hoover, might not have been aware of just how insidious such subversion could—and ostensibly has—become.  




*See https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/labor#section_2


**https://showmeinstitute.org/blog/government-unions/what-was-fdrs-stance-on-government-unions